A Coda is a term suggesting the denouement of a musical piece. This blog is a denouement of sorts … a few comments on an important part of my life that came to a rather sad end. As I write this, I feel a little like Michel de Montaigne. He was a minor French nobleman and late 16th century essayist who wrote about his everyday experiences. As such, he is considered the first blogger, though absent the convenience of cyberspace. No, you would have to plow through one thousand pages of print to absorb his sensitive and even profound insights.

I suspect it takes a special form of hubris to believe that anyone else might possibly be interested in your personal thoughts. It has occurred to me that I am such a narcissist. Either that, or more likely, I am writing simply for me. I wonder if Montaigne felt the same way.

Anyway, the pic below is my wedding to Mary Rider. It took place on December 22, 1972. It was a small affair … Mary and I, our two witnesses who were work colleagues (and friends), and one other couple who took pics. We walked across the street from where we worked to the Dane County courthouse to be married by a liberal Judge (in 1972) and future neighbor who did not mind that Mary kept her name, wore no wedding ring, and that I wrote our personal vows that very morning.

Then, we drove up to the Twin Cities to break the news to her family. We’re they surprised! When her dad got up and left the room, I feared he was retrieving his hunting rifle. But no, he brought out a check while saying, ‘upon acceptance of this gift, the property in question can not be returned.’ The real awkward part was that her dad, not knowing we had lived together, thought this was our wedding night. Oy vez!

I met Mary in a master’s program where we both were students. We had just one date, and I sort of moved in with her. I stayed despite the fact that she served me the worst breakfast imaginable the following morning. You see, her mother (an instinctive feminist) made a deal with her only daughter. If she did well in school, Mary would not have to learn any domestic skills. She eagerly accepted that bargain. As a result, she had acquired no conventional domestic skills.

I found Mary to be smart, witty, independent, and seemingly uninterested in marriage … which was just the way to penetrate my anti-commitment defenses. We lived together for over a year before I suggested marriage, in the bathroom as I recall. Then, a bit to my surprise, she full-court pressed to get this wedding done before we were to visit her parents that Christmas, only a short time in the future. When my birth certificate was late in arriving from Worceter, she called the post office and the city clerk’s office to light a fire under them.

Much to my surprise, marriage turned out okay, even better than that. Based on my folk’s disastrous union, I assumed it would be little more than a lifetime of pain. Just the opposite, we had many laughs, both of us evolved into excellent careers, and we enjoyed many joint adventures, including a fair amount of travel.

Above, we are either in Greece or (then) Yugoslavia in the late 1970s. We were amazingly compatible and our values and personalities meshed well. Okay, we had some differences. On this trip, she still wanted to save money and chose one of the cheapest accommodations available. I, being a hedonist, wanted to go more upscale. On Corfu, she won and we stayed in a very cheap hotel with no bathroom (in the room) or running water. There was a pan of water. After Mary washed her hands, she casually asked what she should do with the dirty water. ‘Throw it out,’ I replied without thinking. She did … out the room window. A moment later, we heard screams from the outdoor restaurant below.

I can’t fully summarize our lives together here, nor our many narrow escapes. But I must share one vignette. Early on, before I moved to the University and she moved to assume the position of Deputy Director of the Wisconsin Court System, we worked in the same office building. One day, she needed to use the restroom, which was on a different floor. As she came off the elevator, she noticed a very handsome man leaning over a water fountain as he slaked his thirst. For some reason, she assumed it was me. Checking that no one was around, she crept up behind her victim and reached between his legs to give his family jewels a good squeeze.

It was not me. It took an hour for the rescue squad to scrape this poor bastard off the ceiling. But I did get several sympathy cards from him over the years for sticking with this raving lunatic. As I said, many laughs.

The above pic was taken later in our lives. I am pretty sure this was taken at Blackhawk Country Club early in her cognitive decline. We were members there and had tortured ourselves for many years on their demanding golf course. I might add that she did get a hole in one while I did not … proof that there is no God. This was not something she would let me forget until her early onset Alzheimers robbed her of that memory among so many others.

This last pic is Mary at Brookdale memory care. That devastating disease is known as the long goodbye for a reason. The stricken person suffers from a progressive decay of their mental functions until full-time care is necessary. Her decline was painful to watch. This honors graduate from the UW school of law eventually could no longer recognize the important people in her life, including me. The Covid pandemic was especially brutal. Only cyber visits via computer were permitted.

In 2022, she passed while in Hospice care. For a long time, she had not been Mary, just a mere shell of herself. Unlike other Alzheimer’s victims, she never lost her sweet personality. And until she ceased to recognize me, she never stopped wacking me in the stomach … her lifelong yet futile effort to subdue my awful sense of humor. That’s what I miss the most … her love taps as she called them. Of course, if they ever do an autopsy on me, the medical examiner will look at my damaged internal organs and wonder if I had been a POW at Hanoi Hilton 😀.

For a guy who dreaded the thought of marriage, life turned out amazingly well. Thanks Rider!